Garth Paltridge: Four Questions On Climate Change

Date: 01/05/18

Garth Paltridge, Global Warming Policy Foundation

A statement to the effect that there is a ‘consensus among scientists’ on AGW is more or less equivalent to saying that ‘the science is settled’. While there is certainly a consensus among scientists that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will increase the average surface temperature of the world above what it would have been otherwise, there is far from a consensus that the rise in temperature will be large enough to be significant. Bear in mind also that ‘what the temperature would have been otherwise’ is also subject to natural variability and is therefore very uncertain. There is even less of a consensus among scientists, environmentalists and economists that any rise of temperature would necessarily be detrimental.